Letters

Historical shifts

WITH regards to Israel and Palestine, I wish to add a few observations.

1. Emperor Hadrian renamed the area Syria Palaestina, after the Second Jewish Revolt in 135 AD, merging the Roman provinces of Syria and Judea with several other formerly nominally independent territories.

Before then, what is today Israel consisted of the nominally independent Jewish territory of Galilee and the Roman-administered province of Judea, contradicting Arab governments’ propaganda that those areas were ever called Palestine. The Roman Latin word ‘Palaestina’ means Philistia, the arch enemy of ancient Israel, whose people, defunct by the 7th century BC, inhabited the southwest corner of what is today Israel.

2. The Palestinian people of today are a fiction, officially created to the first Arab League summit held in Cairo, Egypt in January 1964, where the Palestine Liberation Organisation was also created.

3. As the successor organisation of the League of Nations, the UN initially followed the League of Nations Palestine Mandate of 1922, and the territory of Palestine under the mandate includes Gaza and the West Bank.

The non-binding 1947 UN Resolution 181 sought to divide Palestine into two states, one for the Jews, and one for the Arabs, which the Jews accepted, but Arab governments rejected.

Hamas and their fellow travellers in the Middle East and beyond are clear in their desire to destroy Israel.

I would suggest some of your correspondents take a long hard look at history.